Lazy Equation
This work was part of Looking 101, a 2022 exhibition that supported Northwestern University’s undergraduate curriculum with an emphasis on first-year students. The following text was made available in the exhibition via cell phone camera (QR code) and booklet:
Kameelah Janan Rasheed is an educator and self-described learner based in Brooklyn, New York. She focuses on curriculum design while bringing her pedagogical expertise and interest in various learning styles to her practice as an interdisciplinary artist. Rasheed works mainly with a photocopier, a tool for self-publication and DIY dissemination, to print diagrammatic poems or word compositions that are digitized and reprinted on vinyl, photo paper, and other surfaces. In this work, Rasheed creates a comparison between the mathematical concepts expressed through ratios and equations and how the lives and experiences of marginalized communities are often reduced and simplified to signs, statistics, and symbols. The words included in her works are open to individual interpretation, as Rasheed explains: Some people come to my work and read it like a book. One person said, “I went to your show, and I googled every sentence, because I wanted to understand the source information.” And others say, “Girl, this is pretty. I just like the shape, and I don’t know what the words are, but I like how the text creates this shape on the wall.” All that counts as reading. Going into a space and trying to make sense of what’s there is a reading process. That's the case for all art.
